Perhaps the analogy wasn't so great. But the thing to keep in mind is that you are not purchasing the music. You purchasing a license to play the music, a license which comes with terms, to which you agreed by the act of purchasing. If you don't like the terms, then you simply shouldn't purchase it.
As for copyright infringement not being theft, that is debatable. Speaking from my background studying property rights in regards to the takings power (emminent domain) of government, the right of ownership in property consists of a "bundle" of rights. Taking one of those rights from the owner is, I believe, theft. You needn't take them all. It should be inarguable that one of the rights in intellectual property is the sole power to determine who may and may not have access to your property and under what terms. If the author decided that you should be able to listen only on the second Tuesday of May each year, it is his right to attempt to sell that for whatever price the market will bear. If you don't like the terms, you are free to not purchase it. You are not free to unilaterally decide to change the terms of purchase because you feel restrained.
And this is something else I don't understand, all this dependance on tax preparation software. Really, how many of the people here are incapable of doing their own taxes? I mean, I do a 1040 long with a Schedule E for corporate dividends and S Corp income, with a K-1, and my corporate return, an 1120S. This stuff is not, um, rocket science, and I'm sure mine is more complicated than the vast majority of typical wage-slaves' who take the standard deductions. If you track your finances with something like Quicken (and QuickBooks in my case), and categorize things properly, it is rather trivial. I also minimize withholding by maxing out the W-4, and file quarterly estimated taxes, with a target of owing a little bit come April 15th, rather than giving Uncle Sam an interest free loan (he appears to have gotten a $30 loan from me last year). This is all easy enough if you keep a good handle on your finances throughout the year.
I suppose I could understand the target market of those putzes they show in TV commercials lately, using TurboTax to file online (for a fee of course), and then blowing their big refunded interest-free loan to the government on some vacation. But slashdotters? Aren't we smarter than that?
online downloading and uploading of transactions looked to be incompatible with my bank
I don't really understand this. I used to use the transaction download thing, but I quickly became frustrated with it. The names of the payees were generally in all-caps and truncated, or wrong. You have to go through and categorize them, and if the transaction should be split into multiple categories, as a great number are, you need the original receipt anyway to break it down properly. I gave up after a couple months, and for years now I have just saved my receipts, and every day or two or three, sat down and entered transactions. When I get a statement, I reconcile, adding in the two or three transactions which I missed. It's not much work, especially when accounting for the need to fix what you download. But still, everybody is all hung up on downloading transactions. It seems like a bother that isn't worth it.
Who said rockstars need to have their every whim catered to? Who drove the cost of music videos through the roof? Who demands artists pay $20,000/hour for some "big name" producer to hit a few buttons in Pro Tools? Who demands artists pay thousands an hour for studio time? Who created this bloated, overinflated, cookie cutter music market where it's ridiculously expensive to get exposure? Who helped create the radio station conglomerates like Clear Channel and Infinity? Who created this situation where it's prohibitively difficult for non-affiliated artists to get more than small, local exposure?
Uh, the people who paid, still pay, and continue to pay for it? Big-evil-corporations exist because people pay them money. Nobody needs music on CDs/records/tapes, or encoded in mp3s. Nobody has a right to it. The only rights involved are those of the creator and of those to whom he delegates his rights.
Nobody forces an artist to sign a contract with a big label. They do it of their own free will, generally because of greed. They aren't content with having their "real" jobs, playing at local venues when they aren't working to pay rent, perhaps growing popular through word of mouth. They want to "hit it big" and think they need the power of an agent/label/distributor/so-on. Such is their right.
That a work of art should have protection against copying was an obvious and fundamental enough concept that our ancestors enshrined it in the Constitution of the United States as an explicit obligation of the Congress to enforce, over two hundred years ago, when music was sold via lyric sheet. The mental product of your fellow man has value, and is worthy of legal protection. Regarding DRM, finding some clever way to open a vault and remove the gold within makes it no less theft. Finding clever ways around DRM to extract the protected work within makes the act no less theft.
Nobody has the right to music, or software, cable TV or for that matter health care. Something that requires the labor of another is not a right. To believe otherwise is to believe that others must labor uncompensated (see: slavery) for oh-so-special you. If you don't like the price being charged, if you don't like the terms of the sale (usage restrictions), don't buy it, and don't steal it. Something that is worth stealing is worth protecting. You know that, they know that.
It's very simple. If enough people cut restricted/expensive music out of their lives entirely, the market will adapt.
http://www.mostchoice.com/business_insurance_cri me _overview.html
Found others too.
As a business owner, believe me, there is insurance for pretty much anything. The only question is whether the premiums are worth it. My broker would be happy to fill you in.:-)
That would ROCK! As 100% owner of an S-corporation, I work hard to minimize my profit. I try to empty the bank account by Dec 31st. Currently, due to the Bush tax cuts, I pay most of my profit out as qualified shareholder dividends, and thus pay only 5% tax on it, total: no payroll taxes, no social security, no unemployment. I also pay out a 15% mandatory contribution to SEP-IRAs for myself and my two employees, tax-free. My personal effective tax rate this year was 2.8%. Imagine how much less I'd pay if there were no taxes on salary! My employees, who currently pay more effective tax than I unfortunately, would pay 0% tax!
I have one of the original Sony WEGA flat screen CRT TVs (which still has a damn fine picture). It is damn heavy. Living in an urban area, in a first floor apartment, I find its weight comforting in the fact that it would be basically impossible to steal in a smash n' grab.:-) Of course, if the thieves do what they did in my car, they'll just smash the screen in spite.
How many really wealthy people do you know? As owner of a small racing sailboat, and member of a rather prestigious yacht club, I do happen to know some, even though I am most definitely not in the least bit wealthy, yet.:-) They don't understate their wealth (well, maybe to the IRS), they just use it differently and in ways you may never notice. They don't need to show off to impress (unless they are new money perhaps), but they do spend it on yachts and clubs, cars, homes (plural), travel, very expensive golf club memberships, civic interests and so on. You may just not notice because you aren't into yachting (or whatever hobby they do spend on), can't get into the clubs they frequent, and their homes are on nice large plots with gated fences well beyond your view.
The fact that occasionally somebody dies and is discovered to have millions in assets, yet lived in a small apartment among the commoners, is news because it is an aberration. The exception proves the rule, as they say.
While that may be a common usage today when naming nations, it is not the meaning of the word when used in a political science context. That is because when people discuss democracy v. republic, they are speaking of that definition number two, and of a republican form of government. Definition 1. does not describe a form of government, 2. does. This is English, words may have multiple, co-equal meanings.
As for the New Shorter OED being a kitchen-sink dictionary, you are rather mistaken. I didn't use a watch glass to read it. The NS OED is a two volume desktop dictionary, and is quite abridged.
The fact of the matter is that in the realm of legal philosophy, republic has a meaning. When the Romans kicked out the Etruscan king, they formed a government, the res publica, where the people were sovereign, but were governed by elected representatives. The People met in their centuries, exercised their sovereign powers and chose represenatives. First the Senate, then later the Pleb Assembly. That ultimate form of the Roman Republic is where the political definition of republic came from, as well as being a blueprint for many later governments. The term "republican form of government" exists as a contrast to a purely democratic form of government.
The fact that the People's Republic of China or the Republic of Kazakhstan chose to use a western term with a couple thousand years of meaning behind it does not somehow strip it of that meaning. When the United States Constitution guarantees to each State a Republican form of government, it has meaning which is understood, and it isn't that Karl Rove should design their government. If W or Boozer Kennedy use it in some other way, well, that's nice.
I unfortunately cannot spend much time researching this, and my college law and philosophy books are boxed up somewhere. I did a quick look through Russell's History of Western Philosophy but that's too obscure. However, when I looked up the Republic of Kazakhstan in the CIA World Fact Book, I did come across these:
Democracy - a form of government in which the supreme power is retained by the people, but which is usually exercised indirectly through a system of representation and delegated authority periodically renewed.
Republic - a representative democracy in which the people's elected deputies (representatives), not the people themselves, vote on legislation
Perhaps you'll appreciate the CIA's classification system of world governments. Though I rather doubt it.
New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Volume 2 (off my shelf, sorry, no URL):
2. Any State in which supreme power is held by the people or their elected representatives as opposed to by a monarch etc.
I believe the OED trumps reference.com. I stand by every word I wrote previously.
As for "pulling out Latin" roots... my (formal) study of law and legal philosophy is what caused me to mention that origin (read M. Cicero, De Re Publica? I suggest the Loeb edition, also on my shelf.), not the mere fact that republic has its etymological root in Latin.
Contradiction? Where, pray tell? A recognition of human biology and thus the fact that the burden of balancing rights affects only one half of the human race, at least in a physical sense, does not contradict a belief that humans have fundamental rights due to being human. That in no way contradicts an argument that society needs to determine the point at which life begins so as to approach the question of abortion in a principled manner.
In nature, there is surely no right to life. No right to food, shelter, medical care, nor a color TV.
I believe that human societies form governments in order to, at the least, recognize and protect the rights of fellow humans. Pretty much every government, whether purely secular or ground in religion, recognizes that a human being has a right to not be killed, and upon being killed, the killer should be judged. Therefore the single most important question as regards abortion is when do humans attain rights? Before that, go ahead, kill away. But be humane. But after that, it requires due process, at least in the United States.
Note, I am not against abortion. I wrote previously that I would absolutely love to see wide-spread global distribution of the "morning-after" pill. I think women have a right to kill their children. But only to a point. The trick is determining what that point is, and then handling the rights of the child, of which the most fundamental is the right to not be killed, in a principled manner. We cannot have laws which charge someone such as Scott Peterson with murder of a fetus, while at the same time not charging a woman who kills her fetus herself, or with medical aid.
Democracy and republic ("res publica") actually mean pretty much the exact same thing, as words: basically, government of the people. From a legal philosophy viewpoint however, they are accepted to have particular meanings, and you can use them with one another even. A constitutional democratic republic is quite different from a direct democracy which is quite different from a constitutional autocratic republic. Direct democracy as a form of governance is considered unwise for anything beyond a very small population. Any statement such as "republic/democracy == good/bad" is rather vacuous.
I do have one question though: What do you call waging war on a country that ain't done shit to you? And don't say pre-emptive, cuz my sides hurt too much from all the laughing I've been doing.
I call it about time.
Iraq wasn't some friendly nation, peacefully trading with its neighbors, minding its own business.
Iraq was a kingdom (as it surely had a king in Saddam) which had invaded its neighbor, an ally to which we were bound by treaty to defend. Iraq was forcefully removed from that neighbor, and agreed to particular conditions in order to cease hostilities. For over a decade Iraq flouted those conditions. For over a decade, Saddam subjected his people to economic sanctions which crippled his nation's economy and robbed his people of their former prosperity, health, and their future, because he refused to submit peacefully and completely to completing his obligations. For over a decade, Iraq attacked forces of the United States engaged in enforcing Iraq's compliance with its obligations. Iraq was in daily violation of its agreements. Iraq had, and surely was continuing to or would in the future, actively sought, purchased, and/or developed dangerous weapons to attack or threaten the United States, its forces, or its allies.
I call deposing Saddam and installing a new government finishing a job. It is surely a mess today. It is surely a mess we helped create when we supported Saddam and sold him weapons. It will be a mess tomorrow. More American soldiers will die. Many more Iraqis will die. Many others will die, and that is a terrible thing. But in the long run, it will likely be for the good. I only say likely. Time will tell.
As for help from others, open your eyes. As I wrote before, the governments of Europe do not give a flying fuck about the poor suffering and dying people of Iraq. No more than they care about all the poor suffering and dying people in countless other places. They care about their own interests first and foremost. If deposing Saddam had been in their interest, they would have helped. Some did, some did not. That's how the world is, now that we don't have the big bad Soviets to bind Europe to us. Our interests have diverged, and will continue to do so.
Most of all, though, I am of the same opinion as Thomas Friedman: Because We Could.
Is that it? Your best answer? I am talking about the fundamental rights of human beings, the primary one being to not be killed. Or are you not interested in human rights? Or are you of the Animal Farm mindset, where all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others?
In the United States and other "modern" nations we have legal systems set up to recognize and defend human rights. I think one fabulous thing we could do in our nation, as well as Botswana or Bumfuck or where-ever it is that women eat their children, is widely and cheaply provide the "morning-after" pill (as well as food for the child-eating mothers).
People have rights. They have rights because they are people, not because a government says so, or a court, or a god, or a mother, or a doctor. It is the role of government to protect those rights, whether it is the child abandoned to die of hunger (not that anybody has a right to food -- no one has the right to the labor of another), or an unborn child should that child have rights. The only question of any importance in determining whether abortion is the business of a woman and her doctor, or the state, is the point at which a human being obtains rights. That's it. It isn't a pragmatic issue of too many kids and not enough adoptive parents or whatever, it is an issue of principles from which law is derived. I am speaking of the United States and its laws, not Bumfuck Africa if that is the strawman you want to use. Humans have rights, and government's role is to protect those rights.
Al-Qaeda's attack on us may have been illegal under our laws, but not under theirs. Calling it illegal in some grand world-wide context may be comforting, but that has no real meaning. Legal, illegal, it doesn't really make an iota of difference.
As for making war, Al-Qaeda cannot make war in the traditional sense. Al-Qaeda is not a nation. That is why people balk at the vacant phrase "war on terror." I would argue that if it were Afghanistan that attacked us, then yes, they certainly can make war on whomever they wish. However, there are consequences. Those consequences are why nations do not make war on one another, not because of some supposed international law and fear of the international police prosecuting you in international court.
Law is not just some piece of paper, some words, and violation thereof makes some act illegal. Law, to be legitimate in my world-view, must be made by legitimately elected bodies. It applies only to those who have consented to the law, e.g. via election. It must be reviewable, and applied by courts. And, quite importantly, the body which enacted it must possess the power to enforce it. Law without power is not law. It is advice. What people refer to as international law fails most if not all of those tests. It is not law. It cannot be law, ever, because the world does not and assuredly will never recognize any entity as sovereign above and beyond the nation-state.
So what we have are groups of sovereign states making treaties with one another, forming alliances. Those sovereign states obey the treaties when it is in their interest, and do not when it is not. Like they always have.
But remember, you still voted for a guy who illegally invaded a sovereign country on false pretenses and couldn't even do that right.
Illegal how? Precisely? The Congress of the United States authorized the use of force. I'm sure you'll argue that it was illegal due to some international law we somehow violated. The United States is a sovereign nation. We can make war on whomever we wish.
We may have treaty obligations, but those are voluntary so far as Congress is concerned. The United States will not get arrested, tried, and sent to prison. We won't have our government dissolved as a result of an international conviction, and UN Blue Helmets here until the UN wisely forms a new transitional government for us.
The mere fact that the United Nations didn't give its precious stamp of approval did not somehow make our decision to wage war illegal. Certainly, it may have been unwise to wage war without the support of our traditional allies. It may have been contrary to a treaty or two (though I highly doubt that). But not illegal. The sovereign powers of the United States of America come from the people of the United States, and we determine whether or not our actions are legal, not others.
As for the support of our allies, that is a facetious argument. The world has changed. The Soviet Union is no more. The Cold War is over. And the common interests which bound Europe so strongly to the United States in the latter half of the 20th century are no longer the same. The fact that France, seeking to promote the EU as a powerful counterbalance to the United States, and seeking to lead the EU, chose to not back and in fact obstruct its ally, speaks more to a realignment of global interests than anything else. France and Germany most certainly did not give a flying fuck about the poor innocent people of Iraq. They care about their own domestic and geo-political interests, and those appear to no longer be as closely aligned to ours as they once were (though in the case of France, that's been true for a while; see NATO, De Gaulle, 1966). The world goes on, and it won't be the same as it was.
Now, if you want to argue that it was illegal because Congress was granted the sole power to declare war (U.S.C. Art I Sec 8), that carries more water. Congress hasn't declared war since WWII.
Larry -- When in 1966 Charles de Gaulle ordered France out of NATO and American troops off French soil, Secretary of State Dean Rusk asked him if that included the American soldiers lying dead in the cemeteries at Normandy and throughout France.
Detaining people indefinitely without any charges or access to lawyers in a manner that is illegal under both US and international laws.
Agreed, to a point. However, keep in mind that there is no such thing as international law. There are only voluntary treaty obligations, and a sovereign nation can disregard those obligations when it feels it is in its interest. If the United States violates these alleged international laws, is some international police force going to come and arrest the United States (or its officers), take them to the international pokey, and try them in the international court? No. Law is only law when it can be enforced, emphasis on forced. Law in the final analysis is force, guns, violence, and the inability to enforce law means it is not law. This recent obsession with the concept of international law and the United States' violation thereof is ridiculous. We do not yet have, and thankfully likely never will have, a global government which can enforce global laws.
Having said that, I fully believe that all persons under the control of the United States should have access to habeas corpus. In the case of prisoners with supposed intelligence value, the courts should show deference and not grant habeas corpus literally, but rather appoint an impartial counsel to represent the prisoner and argue for review.
Saying if it was up to him, woman have no right to control their own bodies
The single most important question to be resolved in this issue is that of when a human obtains rights. When the head starts to stick out? Is it one nanosecond after birth? After being spanked and sucking in some air? Or is it when the heart starts beating? The brain starts showing activity? When is it? And don't you dare say it is the decision of the mother and her doctor: the fundamental rights of man deserve better.
I am not religious. I don't believe in a god, a soul, or heaven or hell. When we die, we rot away and that is it (unless we get cremated). Yet I believe in human rights, rights we have by virtue of being living creatures. Arguably, one of the most critical rights is the right to not be killed.
So, when does the human animal obtain rights? This is something that needs to be decided. An abortion of a human which has obtained rights needs to then be subject to protection of those human rights, e.g. due process of the law, a court hearing, counsel representing the rights of the parties. Incest, rape, whatever. The human whose life is to be terminated has rights, and the inconvenience of carrying to viability, perhaps getting a scar during a C-section, is trumped by the right of a fellow human being to life. Nature has set up this role for women with which it has not burdened men. Women are designed to have children. That's the only way we get them.
Trying to keep a couple in love from marrying in a civil ceremony, while divorced people re-marrying are no more in line with christianity
Amen. In fact, our secular government has no business whatsoever regulating relationships among consenting adults. The government should protect children prior to the age of majority, those who are incompetent, and as sick as it sounds, animals. But every other relationship should be recognized. Man, woman. Man, man. Woman, woman.
And also man to fifty women. Three men to twelve women. And so on. You want to "legalize" gay marriage. I say wonderful! But we also need to legalize harems. It's funny how some liberals with whom I discuss this balk at the idea of harems.
Governments don't have rights. People have rights. Governments have powers. And, in the United States at least, governments are granted their limited, specific powers in black and white, on paper (or parchment).
"State's rights" is a misnomer. The true issue is that of shared sovereignty, the concept that in this nation we haven't granted every last scrap of power to the federal government, but rather we have granted different, and occasionally overlapping, powers to our different governments. A state here is sovereign at the same time that the federal government is. A state is not some administrative unit at the beck and call of the federal government. It is a co-equal unit in exercising some of the powers that we, the people, have granted to government.
"State's rights" is really about people's rights, namely the right to have our written agreements (constitutions) obeyed and respected. Those who oppose "state's rights" generally do so because they prefer to have a single, central government exercising all power, so as to have a single place to lobby and a single place to legislate control over all. Those who support "state's rights" are those who support the wise concept of "geographical separation of powers" as envisioned by the founders.
The Supremes were correct when they ruled that the Florida Supreme Court overstepped its bounds in Bush v. Gore.
The Supreme Court of Florida has authority over actions taken under Florida law and the Florida constitution. However, the regulation of the method of electing federal electors was granted solely to the state legislature directly from the federal constitution. Article II, Section 1:
Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors..."
The Florida courts have no authority to determine whether or not the regulations are proper: it is not a power granted by the people of Florida, and is not reviewable by the courts of Florida, no more than an act of Congress is.
Further, the Supreme Court is a court of review in nearly all cases. It is not their place to determine the facts of a case. The issues are the procedures used, not the underlying facts as determined in a court of original jurisdiction. In Bush v. Gore, the justices determined that the Florida legislature enacted rules within its legal grant of power, and that the Florida courts had no power to review that. Case over. Good decision.
A bad decision is one like Roe v. Wade. Rather than merely use, say, oh, the Ninth Amendment to rule that a woman has the right to abortion, and perhaps rule when life begins so far as the due process clause would seem to require (due process demands that human life not be forfeit without due process; when does life and therefore the obligation of government to protect it begin?), the Supremes devised a truly stupid and obtuse doctrine to justify their decision post factum. They then proceeded to legislate from the bench, laying down a complex set of rules on the topic. The proper action would have to been to strike the original law, give guidance, and tell the legislatures to try again. And the next time the law made it to them, they could approve of it, or give further guidance. That is the proper role of a court in a democratic society. That is how our legal system is supposed to work. Legislatures write laws. Courts approve of them, or strike them, not devise complex procedures to implement in lieu of the will of the elected legislature.
Note the similarity with the Florida Supremes in Bush v. Gore. Rather than rule that the legislature had erred, and direct the legislature to correct such error, the Florida Supremes took it into their own hands to devise a complex procedure to perform a recount. Even had the power to do such been granted by the Florida constitution, that is the role of an elected legislature. But even worse, that power wasn't granted by the Florida constitution, and the Florida Supremes *still* decided that they had somehow been provided the power to exercise that authority.
I'm sure the counter-argument will be about justice, right and wrong, fairness, partisanship, stealing elections and so on. But in Bush v. Gore, a rational mind, setting partisan emotion aside, which has examined the facts of the case will find that the Court acted properly and within its realm of power. The Florida court did not.
... or if you trash your registry, which is not easy to do.
Huh? I built a brand new machine, installed W2000 on it. Installed a bunch of applications. Started using it. Two days after building it, the machine refused to boot. Some bullshit about a damaged hive. Talk about user friendly.
I tried the recovery console. The only registry I could find was pre-app install. There was nothing I could do to save the registry data (the hive) because it is some binary format. I googled for programs that might be able to examine a hive file and fix it. I tried the MS knowledge base. No luck.
So I wiped the drive and started over. Now I backup the registry on a regular basis, and after every application installation... good policy that. But regardless, it was insanely easy to trash my registry. I am of the opinion that it was caused by a bad block being discovered by the brand-new hard drive, and the internal block reallocation caused the registry to die. The registry is an evil, stupid, opaque sore. A giant binary file that contains all the family jewels for every last application and the operating system, just waiting there to be corrupted. What a brilliant and innovative concept.
Cray was always big on the memorabilia. I worked there as an intern for two years in the mid-90s. I still have many t-shirts (including our custom "World's Fastest Interns" version), some very cool posters, a ceramic Y-MP model, obligatory mugs, a cool 1-800-BUG-CRAY coaster, so on. I would call them up every so often after leaving there, and have them send me rolls of new posters and such.
That was a unique experience... I had a security pass to the machine room, full of Cray C-90, Y-MP, X-MP, Cray-1 & Cray-2, lots of others. Awesome environment.
This is also not the first time this has happened. In the early 90s, Cray purchased a small start-up that was developing a NUMA-style mini-super based on sparc processors. They turned it into a product and sold a few, though not as many as they would have liked.
The SuperDragon! I worked at Cray Research in that timeframe, I have some SuperDragon memorabilia. When I was there, the T3D was under development, and was considered a mid-range supercomputer, beneath the C90, above the "entry-level" EL series.
What the Supreme Court ruled is, ahem, nuanced. Yet, clear.
To wit:
The Supreme Court of the State of Florida has the power to review the acts of the legislature of the state when those acts are an exercise of a power granted by the people of Florida via the Florida constitution.
However, the United States Constitution states "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress..." The Supremes ruled that such power exercised via an explicit grant of authority in the United States Constitution is not reviewable by a state supreme court. Hence, the Florida Supreme Court had no power to intervene in determining the manner in which Florida assigns Electors: the authority was not grounded in the Florida constitution, but rather the United States constitution. That power is clearly granted solely to the Legislature, and given the source of the authority, it is directly reviewable by the United States Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court decision, while unquestionably controversial, was correct. This power of regulating federal elections was allocated solely to the elected state legislature, and is a federal, not state, matter when it comes to review.
And this depends on your goal: to walk away safely, or to confront injustice through the legal system. In our legal system there is something called "standing." If you want to be heard in court, you must have standing. You acquire standing when you have been personally harmed by something. In the case where you wish to get an unjust law overturned, you generally acquire standing by being charged with violating said law. If you don't have standing, you can't fight the law. Hence the ACLU finding a patsy to break an offensive "law" after which the ACLU bankroles the legal assault. We don't exactly remember those who saved themselves to fight another day, writing letters to the editor and calling to lodge a formal complaint with the police department, working nicely within the status quo.
In the United States, our legal system depends on a few checks which are not part of the electoral system. As I like to say, a bill becoming "law" just starts the dance. One check is the jury system in original cases, wherein average Joe Blow citizens serve on a jury, and can judge the LAW as well as the facts. They can choose whether or not a law is just and whether or not to apply it. Thus the reason we have a jury of citizens, not professional, government-paid, legally educated (one-with-the-system) jurors. Lord forbid the day we get professional jurors. Another check is the DUTY of citizens (those brave enough) to violate an unjust law and get the machinery of the courts moving to determine whether or not that law is actually valid.
Unfortunately, now that we have a 200+ year old stable legal system, people are being brainwashed into believing that the only legitimate outlet for opposing law is through the legislative process. Already so many believe that a jury should judge only facts, not law. And the deference a court gives to a presumption of legislative correctness is excessive, intended more to grease the skids of our huge bureaucratic governments than to defend the rights of the people against violation.
So, standing up to the "foot soldier" is sometimes necessary. Perhaps, or perhaps not, in defense of using unencrypted wifi. But there are larger issues within our society which demand that brave men and women put their safety and liberty on the line in order to protect us all.
Uh, and just where did the barbarian Gauls (er, French) acquire the word? Your definition gives you the answer: L. dexteritas, fr. dexter: cf. F. dext['e]rit['e]. See Dexter. The capital L means Latin.
Considering that French grew largely from low, gutter Latin, it shouldn't be a surprise.
Also, the derivation is interesting. As dexter means not only on the right, but also favored, and dexteritas (capable, apt, so on) is derived from dexter, it appears that the Romans had a preference for the right-handed that extended into language. I feel sorry for those left-handed Roman kids...
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps the analogy wasn't so great. But the thing to keep in mind is that you are not purchasing the music. You purchasing a license to play the music, a license which comes with terms, to which you agreed by the act of purchasing. If you don't like the terms, then you simply shouldn't purchase it.
As for copyright infringement not being theft, that is debatable. Speaking from my background studying property rights in regards to the takings power (emminent domain) of government, the right of ownership in property consists of a "bundle" of rights. Taking one of those rights from the owner is, I believe, theft. You needn't take them all. It should be inarguable that one of the rights in intellectual property is the sole power to determine who may and may not have access to your property and under what terms. If the author decided that you should be able to listen only on the second Tuesday of May each year, it is his right to attempt to sell that for whatever price the market will bear. If you don't like the terms, you are free to not purchase it. You are not free to unilaterally decide to change the terms of purchase because you feel restrained.
Larry
And this is something else I don't understand, all this dependance on tax preparation software. Really, how many of the people here are incapable of doing their own taxes? I mean, I do a 1040 long with a Schedule E for corporate dividends and S Corp income, with a K-1, and my corporate return, an 1120S. This stuff is not, um, rocket science, and I'm sure mine is more complicated than the vast majority of typical wage-slaves' who take the standard deductions. If you track your finances with something like Quicken (and QuickBooks in my case), and categorize things properly, it is rather trivial. I also minimize withholding by maxing out the W-4, and file quarterly estimated taxes, with a target of owing a little bit come April 15th, rather than giving Uncle Sam an interest free loan (he appears to have gotten a $30 loan from me last year). This is all easy enough if you keep a good handle on your finances throughout the year.
I suppose I could understand the target market of those putzes they show in TV commercials lately, using TurboTax to file online (for a fee of course), and then blowing their big refunded interest-free loan to the government on some vacation. But slashdotters? Aren't we smarter than that?
Larry
online downloading and uploading of transactions looked to be incompatible with my bank
I don't really understand this. I used to use the transaction download thing, but I quickly became frustrated with it. The names of the payees were generally in all-caps and truncated, or wrong. You have to go through and categorize them, and if the transaction should be split into multiple categories, as a great number are, you need the original receipt anyway to break it down properly. I gave up after a couple months, and for years now I have just saved my receipts, and every day or two or three, sat down and entered transactions. When I get a statement, I reconcile, adding in the two or three transactions which I missed. It's not much work, especially when accounting for the need to fix what you download. But still, everybody is all hung up on downloading transactions. It seems like a bother that isn't worth it.
Larry
Who said rockstars need to have their every whim catered to? Who drove the cost of music videos through the roof? Who demands artists pay $20,000/hour for some "big name" producer to hit a few buttons in Pro Tools? Who demands artists pay thousands an hour for studio time? Who created this bloated, overinflated, cookie cutter music market where it's ridiculously expensive to get exposure? Who helped create the radio station conglomerates like Clear Channel and Infinity? Who created this situation where it's prohibitively difficult for non-affiliated artists to get more than small, local exposure?
Uh, the people who paid, still pay, and continue to pay for it? Big-evil-corporations exist because people pay them money. Nobody needs music on CDs/records/tapes, or encoded in mp3s. Nobody has a right to it. The only rights involved are those of the creator and of those to whom he delegates his rights.
Nobody forces an artist to sign a contract with a big label. They do it of their own free will, generally because of greed. They aren't content with having their "real" jobs, playing at local venues when they aren't working to pay rent, perhaps growing popular through word of mouth. They want to "hit it big" and think they need the power of an agent/label/distributor/so-on. Such is their right.
That a work of art should have protection against copying was an obvious and fundamental enough concept that our ancestors enshrined it in the Constitution of the United States as an explicit obligation of the Congress to enforce, over two hundred years ago, when music was sold via lyric sheet. The mental product of your fellow man has value, and is worthy of legal protection. Regarding DRM, finding some clever way to open a vault and remove the gold within makes it no less theft. Finding clever ways around DRM to extract the protected work within makes the act no less theft.
Nobody has the right to music, or software, cable TV or for that matter health care. Something that requires the labor of another is not a right. To believe otherwise is to believe that others must labor uncompensated (see: slavery) for oh-so-special you. If you don't like the price being charged, if you don't like the terms of the sale (usage restrictions), don't buy it, and don't steal it. Something that is worth stealing is worth protecting. You know that, they know that.
It's very simple. If enough people cut restricted/expensive music out of their lives entirely, the market will adapt.
Larry
As this sounded like BS, I did a quick Google:
i me _overview.html
:-)
http://www.mostchoice.com/business_insurance_cr
Found others too.
As a business owner, believe me, there is insurance for pretty much anything. The only question is whether the premiums are worth it. My broker would be happy to fill you in.
Larry
That would ROCK! As 100% owner of an S-corporation, I work hard to minimize my profit. I try to empty the bank account by Dec 31st. Currently, due to the Bush tax cuts, I pay most of my profit out as qualified shareholder dividends, and thus pay only 5% tax on it, total: no payroll taxes, no social security, no unemployment. I also pay out a 15% mandatory contribution to SEP-IRAs for myself and my two employees, tax-free. My personal effective tax rate this year was 2.8%. Imagine how much less I'd pay if there were no taxes on salary! My employees, who currently pay more effective tax than I unfortunately, would pay 0% tax!
Larry
I have one of the original Sony WEGA flat screen CRT TVs (which still has a damn fine picture). It is damn heavy. Living in an urban area, in a first floor apartment, I find its weight comforting in the fact that it would be basically impossible to steal in a smash n' grab. :-) Of course, if the thieves do what they did in my car, they'll just smash the screen in spite.
Larry
How many really wealthy people do you know? As owner of a small racing sailboat, and member of a rather prestigious yacht club, I do happen to know some, even though I am most definitely not in the least bit wealthy, yet. :-) They don't understate their wealth (well, maybe to the IRS), they just use it differently and in ways you may never notice. They don't need to show off to impress (unless they are new money perhaps), but they do spend it on yachts and clubs, cars, homes (plural), travel, very expensive golf club memberships, civic interests and so on. You may just not notice because you aren't into yachting (or whatever hobby they do spend on), can't get into the clubs they frequent, and their homes are on nice large plots with gated fences well beyond your view.
The fact that occasionally somebody dies and is discovered to have millions in assets, yet lived in a small apartment among the commoners, is news because it is an aberration. The exception proves the rule, as they say.
Larry
Oh my dear Minna, you got me!
Yes, I picked #2. #1 is:
The State, the general good.
While that may be a common usage today when naming nations, it is not the meaning of the word when used in a political science context. That is because when people discuss democracy v. republic, they are speaking of that definition number two, and of a republican form of government. Definition 1. does not describe a form of government, 2. does. This is English, words may have multiple, co-equal meanings.
As for the New Shorter OED being a kitchen-sink dictionary, you are rather mistaken. I didn't use a watch glass to read it. The NS OED is a two volume desktop dictionary, and is quite abridged.
The fact of the matter is that in the realm of legal philosophy, republic has a meaning. When the Romans kicked out the Etruscan king, they formed a government, the res publica, where the people were sovereign, but were governed by elected representatives. The People met in their centuries, exercised their sovereign powers and chose represenatives. First the Senate, then later the Pleb Assembly. That ultimate form of the Roman Republic is where the political definition of republic came from, as well as being a blueprint for many later governments. The term "republican form of government" exists as a contrast to a purely democratic form of government.
The fact that the People's Republic of China or the Republic of Kazakhstan chose to use a western term with a couple thousand years of meaning behind it does not somehow strip it of that meaning. When the United States Constitution guarantees to each State a Republican form of government, it has meaning which is understood, and it isn't that Karl Rove should design their government. If W or Boozer Kennedy use it in some other way, well, that's nice.
I unfortunately cannot spend much time researching this, and my college law and philosophy books are boxed up somewhere. I did a quick look through Russell's History of Western Philosophy but that's too obscure. However, when I looked up the Republic of Kazakhstan in the CIA World Fact Book, I did come across these:
Democracy - a form of government in which the supreme power is retained by the people, but which is usually exercised indirectly through a system of representation and delegated authority periodically renewed.
Republic - a representative democracy in which the people's elected deputies (representatives), not the people themselves, vote on legislation
Perhaps you'll appreciate the CIA's classification system of world governments. Though I rather doubt it.
Larry
New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Volume 2 (off my shelf, sorry, no URL):
2. Any State in which supreme power is held by the people or their elected representatives as opposed to by a monarch etc.
I believe the OED trumps reference.com. I stand by every word I wrote previously.
As for "pulling out Latin" roots... my (formal) study of law and legal philosophy is what caused me to mention that origin (read M. Cicero, De Re Publica? I suggest the Loeb edition, also on my shelf.), not the mere fact that republic has its etymological root in Latin.
Larry
Contradiction? Where, pray tell? A recognition of human biology and thus the fact that the burden of balancing rights affects only one half of the human race, at least in a physical sense, does not contradict a belief that humans have fundamental rights due to being human. That in no way contradicts an argument that society needs to determine the point at which life begins so as to approach the question of abortion in a principled manner.
In nature, there is surely no right to life. No right to food, shelter, medical care, nor a color TV.
I believe that human societies form governments in order to, at the least, recognize and protect the rights of fellow humans. Pretty much every government, whether purely secular or ground in religion, recognizes that a human being has a right to not be killed, and upon being killed, the killer should be judged. Therefore the single most important question as regards abortion is when do humans attain rights? Before that, go ahead, kill away. But be humane. But after that, it requires due process, at least in the United States.
Note, I am not against abortion. I wrote previously that I would absolutely love to see wide-spread global distribution of the "morning-after" pill. I think women have a right to kill their children. But only to a point. The trick is determining what that point is, and then handling the rights of the child, of which the most fundamental is the right to not be killed, in a principled manner. We cannot have laws which charge someone such as Scott Peterson with murder of a fetus, while at the same time not charging a woman who kills her fetus herself, or with medical aid.
Larry
Democracy and republic ("res publica") actually mean pretty much the exact same thing, as words: basically, government of the people. From a legal philosophy viewpoint however, they are accepted to have particular meanings, and you can use them with one another even. A constitutional democratic republic is quite different from a direct democracy which is quite different from a constitutional autocratic republic. Direct democracy as a form of governance is considered unwise for anything beyond a very small population. Any statement such as "republic/democracy == good/bad" is rather vacuous.
Larry
I do have one question though: What do you call waging war on a country that ain't done shit to you? And don't say pre-emptive, cuz my sides hurt too much from all the laughing I've been doing.
I call it about time.
Iraq wasn't some friendly nation, peacefully trading with its neighbors, minding its own business.
Iraq was a kingdom (as it surely had a king in Saddam) which had invaded its neighbor, an ally to which we were bound by treaty to defend. Iraq was forcefully removed from that neighbor, and agreed to particular conditions in order to cease hostilities. For over a decade Iraq flouted those conditions. For over a decade, Saddam subjected his people to economic sanctions which crippled his nation's economy and robbed his people of their former prosperity, health, and their future, because he refused to submit peacefully and completely to completing his obligations. For over a decade, Iraq attacked forces of the United States engaged in enforcing Iraq's compliance with its obligations. Iraq was in daily violation of its agreements. Iraq had, and surely was continuing to or would in the future, actively sought, purchased, and/or developed dangerous weapons to attack or threaten the United States, its forces, or its allies.
I call deposing Saddam and installing a new government finishing a job. It is surely a mess today. It is surely a mess we helped create when we supported Saddam and sold him weapons. It will be a mess tomorrow. More American soldiers will die. Many more Iraqis will die. Many others will die, and that is a terrible thing. But in the long run, it will likely be for the good. I only say likely. Time will tell.
As for help from others, open your eyes. As I wrote before, the governments of Europe do not give a flying fuck about the poor suffering and dying people of Iraq. No more than they care about all the poor suffering and dying people in countless other places. They care about their own interests first and foremost. If deposing Saddam had been in their interest, they would have helped. Some did, some did not. That's how the world is, now that we don't have the big bad Soviets to bind Europe to us. Our interests have diverged, and will continue to do so.
Most of all, though, I am of the same opinion as Thomas Friedman: Because We Could.
Larry
Is that it? Your best answer? I am talking about the fundamental rights of human beings, the primary one being to not be killed. Or are you not interested in human rights? Or are you of the Animal Farm mindset, where all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others?
In the United States and other "modern" nations we have legal systems set up to recognize and defend human rights. I think one fabulous thing we could do in our nation, as well as Botswana or Bumfuck or where-ever it is that women eat their children, is widely and cheaply provide the "morning-after" pill (as well as food for the child-eating mothers).
People have rights. They have rights because they are people, not because a government says so, or a court, or a god, or a mother, or a doctor. It is the role of government to protect those rights, whether it is the child abandoned to die of hunger (not that anybody has a right to food -- no one has the right to the labor of another), or an unborn child should that child have rights. The only question of any importance in determining whether abortion is the business of a woman and her doctor, or the state, is the point at which a human being obtains rights. That's it. It isn't a pragmatic issue of too many kids and not enough adoptive parents or whatever, it is an issue of principles from which law is derived. I am speaking of the United States and its laws, not Bumfuck Africa if that is the strawman you want to use. Humans have rights, and government's role is to protect those rights.
Larry
Al-Qaeda's attack on us may have been illegal under our laws, but not under theirs. Calling it illegal in some grand world-wide context may be comforting, but that has no real meaning. Legal, illegal, it doesn't really make an iota of difference.
As for making war, Al-Qaeda cannot make war in the traditional sense. Al-Qaeda is not a nation. That is why people balk at the vacant phrase "war on terror." I would argue that if it were Afghanistan that attacked us, then yes, they certainly can make war on whomever they wish. However, there are consequences. Those consequences are why nations do not make war on one another, not because of some supposed international law and fear of the international police prosecuting you in international court.
Law is not just some piece of paper, some words, and violation thereof makes some act illegal. Law, to be legitimate in my world-view, must be made by legitimately elected bodies. It applies only to those who have consented to the law, e.g. via election. It must be reviewable, and applied by courts. And, quite importantly, the body which enacted it must possess the power to enforce it. Law without power is not law. It is advice. What people refer to as international law fails most if not all of those tests. It is not law. It cannot be law, ever, because the world does not and assuredly will never recognize any entity as sovereign above and beyond the nation-state.
So what we have are groups of sovereign states making treaties with one another, forming alliances. Those sovereign states obey the treaties when it is in their interest, and do not when it is not. Like they always have.
Larry
But remember, you still voted for a guy who illegally invaded a sovereign country on false pretenses and couldn't even do that right.
Illegal how? Precisely? The Congress of the United States authorized the use of force. I'm sure you'll argue that it was illegal due to some international law we somehow violated. The United States is a sovereign nation. We can make war on whomever we wish.
We may have treaty obligations, but those are voluntary so far as Congress is concerned. The United States will not get arrested, tried, and sent to prison. We won't have our government dissolved as a result of an international conviction, and UN Blue Helmets here until the UN wisely forms a new transitional government for us.
The mere fact that the United Nations didn't give its precious stamp of approval did not somehow make our decision to wage war illegal. Certainly, it may have been unwise to wage war without the support of our traditional allies. It may have been contrary to a treaty or two (though I highly doubt that). But not illegal. The sovereign powers of the United States of America come from the people of the United States, and we determine whether or not our actions are legal, not others.
As for the support of our allies, that is a facetious argument. The world has changed. The Soviet Union is no more. The Cold War is over. And the common interests which bound Europe so strongly to the United States in the latter half of the 20th century are no longer the same. The fact that France, seeking to promote the EU as a powerful counterbalance to the United States, and seeking to lead the EU, chose to not back and in fact obstruct its ally, speaks more to a realignment of global interests than anything else. France and Germany most certainly did not give a flying fuck about the poor innocent people of Iraq. They care about their own domestic and geo-political interests, and those appear to no longer be as closely aligned to ours as they once were (though in the case of France, that's been true for a while; see NATO, De Gaulle, 1966). The world goes on, and it won't be the same as it was.
Now, if you want to argue that it was illegal because Congress was granted the sole power to declare war (U.S.C. Art I Sec 8), that carries more water. Congress hasn't declared war since WWII.
Larry
--
When in 1966 Charles de Gaulle ordered France out of NATO and American troops off French soil, Secretary of State Dean Rusk asked him if that included the American soldiers lying dead in the cemeteries at Normandy and throughout France.
To address only a couple issues:
Detaining people indefinitely without any charges or access to lawyers in a manner that is illegal under both US and international laws.
Agreed, to a point. However, keep in mind that there is no such thing as international law. There are only voluntary treaty obligations, and a sovereign nation can disregard those obligations when it feels it is in its interest. If the United States violates these alleged international laws, is some international police force going to come and arrest the United States (or its officers), take them to the international pokey, and try them in the international court? No. Law is only law when it can be enforced, emphasis on forced. Law in the final analysis is force, guns, violence, and the inability to enforce law means it is not law. This recent obsession with the concept of international law and the United States' violation thereof is ridiculous. We do not yet have, and thankfully likely never will have, a global government which can enforce global laws.
Having said that, I fully believe that all persons under the control of the United States should have access to habeas corpus. In the case of prisoners with supposed intelligence value, the courts should show deference and not grant habeas corpus literally, but rather appoint an impartial counsel to represent the prisoner and argue for review.
Saying if it was up to him, woman have no right to control their own bodies
The single most important question to be resolved in this issue is that of when a human obtains rights. When the head starts to stick out? Is it one nanosecond after birth? After being spanked and sucking in some air? Or is it when the heart starts beating? The brain starts showing activity? When is it? And don't you dare say it is the decision of the mother and her doctor: the fundamental rights of man deserve better.
I am not religious. I don't believe in a god, a soul, or heaven or hell. When we die, we rot away and that is it (unless we get cremated). Yet I believe in human rights, rights we have by virtue of being living creatures. Arguably, one of the most critical rights is the right to not be killed.
So, when does the human animal obtain rights? This is something that needs to be decided. An abortion of a human which has obtained rights needs to then be subject to protection of those human rights, e.g. due process of the law, a court hearing, counsel representing the rights of the parties. Incest, rape, whatever. The human whose life is to be terminated has rights, and the inconvenience of carrying to viability, perhaps getting a scar during a C-section, is trumped by the right of a fellow human being to life. Nature has set up this role for women with which it has not burdened men. Women are designed to have children. That's the only way we get them.
Trying to keep a couple in love from marrying in a civil ceremony, while divorced people re-marrying are no more in line with christianity
Amen. In fact, our secular government has no business whatsoever regulating relationships among consenting adults. The government should protect children prior to the age of majority, those who are incompetent, and as sick as it sounds, animals. But every other relationship should be recognized. Man, woman. Man, man. Woman, woman.
And also man to fifty women. Three men to twelve women. And so on. You want to "legalize" gay marriage. I say wonderful! But we also need to legalize harems. It's funny how some liberals with whom I discuss this balk at the idea of harems.
Larry
Governments don't have rights. People have rights. Governments have powers. And, in the United States at least, governments are granted their limited, specific powers in black and white, on paper (or parchment).
"State's rights" is a misnomer. The true issue is that of shared sovereignty, the concept that in this nation we haven't granted every last scrap of power to the federal government, but rather we have granted different, and occasionally overlapping, powers to our different governments. A state here is sovereign at the same time that the federal government is. A state is not some administrative unit at the beck and call of the federal government. It is a co-equal unit in exercising some of the powers that we, the people, have granted to government.
"State's rights" is really about people's rights, namely the right to have our written agreements (constitutions) obeyed and respected. Those who oppose "state's rights" generally do so because they prefer to have a single, central government exercising all power, so as to have a single place to lobby and a single place to legislate control over all. Those who support "state's rights" are those who support the wise concept of "geographical separation of powers" as envisioned by the founders.
Larry
The Supremes were correct when they ruled that the Florida Supreme Court overstepped its bounds in Bush v. Gore.
..."
The Supreme Court of Florida has authority over actions taken under Florida law and the Florida constitution. However, the regulation of the method of electing federal electors was granted solely to the state legislature directly from the federal constitution. Article II, Section 1:
Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors
The Florida courts have no authority to determine whether or not the regulations are proper: it is not a power granted by the people of Florida, and is not reviewable by the courts of Florida, no more than an act of Congress is.
Further, the Supreme Court is a court of review in nearly all cases. It is not their place to determine the facts of a case. The issues are the procedures used, not the underlying facts as determined in a court of original jurisdiction. In Bush v. Gore, the justices determined that the Florida legislature enacted rules within its legal grant of power, and that the Florida courts had no power to review that. Case over. Good decision.
A bad decision is one like Roe v. Wade. Rather than merely use, say, oh, the Ninth Amendment to rule that a woman has the right to abortion, and perhaps rule when life begins so far as the due process clause would seem to require (due process demands that human life not be forfeit without due process; when does life and therefore the obligation of government to protect it begin?), the Supremes devised a truly stupid and obtuse doctrine to justify their decision post factum. They then proceeded to legislate from the bench, laying down a complex set of rules on the topic. The proper action would have to been to strike the original law, give guidance, and tell the legislatures to try again. And the next time the law made it to them, they could approve of it, or give further guidance. That is the proper role of a court in a democratic society. That is how our legal system is supposed to work. Legislatures write laws. Courts approve of them, or strike them, not devise complex procedures to implement in lieu of the will of the elected legislature.
Note the similarity with the Florida Supremes in Bush v. Gore. Rather than rule that the legislature had erred, and direct the legislature to correct such error, the Florida Supremes took it into their own hands to devise a complex procedure to perform a recount. Even had the power to do such been granted by the Florida constitution, that is the role of an elected legislature. But even worse, that power wasn't granted by the Florida constitution, and the Florida Supremes *still* decided that they had somehow been provided the power to exercise that authority.
I'm sure the counter-argument will be about justice, right and wrong, fairness, partisanship, stealing elections and so on. But in Bush v. Gore, a rational mind, setting partisan emotion aside, which has examined the facts of the case will find that the Court acted properly and within its realm of power. The Florida court did not.
Larry
... or if you trash your registry, which is not easy to do.
Huh? I built a brand new machine, installed W2000 on it. Installed a bunch of applications. Started using it. Two days after building it, the machine refused to boot. Some bullshit about a damaged hive. Talk about user friendly.
I tried the recovery console. The only registry I could find was pre-app install. There was nothing I could do to save the registry data (the hive) because it is some binary format. I googled for programs that might be able to examine a hive file and fix it. I tried the MS knowledge base. No luck.
So I wiped the drive and started over. Now I backup the registry on a regular basis, and after every application installation... good policy that. But regardless, it was insanely easy to trash my registry. I am of the opinion that it was caused by a bad block being discovered by the brand-new hard drive, and the internal block reallocation caused the registry to die. The registry is an evil, stupid, opaque sore. A giant binary file that contains all the family jewels for every last application and the operating system, just waiting there to be corrupted. What a brilliant and innovative concept.
Larry
Cray was always big on the memorabilia. I worked there as an intern for two years in the mid-90s. I still have many t-shirts (including our custom "World's Fastest Interns" version), some very cool posters, a ceramic Y-MP model, obligatory mugs, a cool 1-800-BUG-CRAY coaster, so on. I would call them up every so often after leaving there, and have them send me rolls of new posters and such.
That was a unique experience... I had a security pass to the machine room, full of Cray C-90, Y-MP, X-MP, Cray-1 & Cray-2, lots of others. Awesome environment.
Larry
This is also not the first time this has happened. In the early 90s, Cray purchased a small start-up that was developing a NUMA-style mini-super based on sparc processors. They turned it into a product and sold a few, though not as many as they would have liked.
The SuperDragon! I worked at Cray Research in that timeframe, I have some SuperDragon memorabilia. When I was there, the T3D was under development, and was considered a mid-range supercomputer, beneath the C90, above the "entry-level" EL series.
Larry
What the Supreme Court ruled is, ahem, nuanced. Yet, clear.
..." The Supremes ruled that such power exercised via an explicit grant of authority in the United States Constitution is not reviewable by a state supreme court. Hence, the Florida Supreme Court had no power to intervene in determining the manner in which Florida assigns Electors: the authority was not grounded in the Florida constitution, but rather the United States constitution. That power is clearly granted solely to the Legislature, and given the source of the authority, it is directly reviewable by the United States Supreme Court.
To wit:
The Supreme Court of the State of Florida has the power to review the acts of the legislature of the state when those acts are an exercise of a power granted by the people of Florida via the Florida constitution.
However, the United States Constitution states "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress
The Supreme Court decision, while unquestionably controversial, was correct. This power of regulating federal elections was allocated solely to the elected state legislature, and is a federal, not state, matter when it comes to review.
Larry
And this depends on your goal: to walk away safely, or to confront injustice through the legal system. In our legal system there is something called "standing." If you want to be heard in court, you must have standing. You acquire standing when you have been personally harmed by something. In the case where you wish to get an unjust law overturned, you generally acquire standing by being charged with violating said law. If you don't have standing, you can't fight the law. Hence the ACLU finding a patsy to break an offensive "law" after which the ACLU bankroles the legal assault. We don't exactly remember those who saved themselves to fight another day, writing letters to the editor and calling to lodge a formal complaint with the police department, working nicely within the status quo.
In the United States, our legal system depends on a few checks which are not part of the electoral system. As I like to say, a bill becoming "law" just starts the dance. One check is the jury system in original cases, wherein average Joe Blow citizens serve on a jury, and can judge the LAW as well as the facts. They can choose whether or not a law is just and whether or not to apply it. Thus the reason we have a jury of citizens, not professional, government-paid, legally educated (one-with-the-system) jurors. Lord forbid the day we get professional jurors. Another check is the DUTY of citizens (those brave enough) to violate an unjust law and get the machinery of the courts moving to determine whether or not that law is actually valid.
Unfortunately, now that we have a 200+ year old stable legal system, people are being brainwashed into believing that the only legitimate outlet for opposing law is through the legislative process. Already so many believe that a jury should judge only facts, not law. And the deference a court gives to a presumption of legislative correctness is excessive, intended more to grease the skids of our huge bureaucratic governments than to defend the rights of the people against violation.
So, standing up to the "foot soldier" is sometimes necessary. Perhaps, or perhaps not, in defense of using unencrypted wifi. But there are larger issues within our society which demand that brave men and women put their safety and liberty on the line in order to protect us all.
Larry
Uh, and just where did the barbarian Gauls (er, French) acquire the word? Your definition gives you the answer: L. dexteritas, fr. dexter: cf. F. dext['e]rit['e]. See Dexter. The capital L means Latin.
Considering that French grew largely from low, gutter Latin, it shouldn't be a surprise.
Also, the derivation is interesting. As dexter means not only on the right, but also favored, and dexteritas (capable, apt, so on) is derived from dexter, it appears that the Romans had a preference for the right-handed that extended into language. I feel sorry for those left-handed Roman kids...
Larry